i) Finally coming to the end of my one remaining game and the Central Powers are collapsing in 1918 due to the superiority in artillery and aircraft that the Entente has. I do think that the artillery superiority is a bit of a problem - the Entente has a 50% advantage with GB, France and Italy having artillery against only Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Entente has a 100% advantage while Russia is still in the war). The air superiority is more accurate, I think. Maybe one way to address this is to say that Italy cannot deploy artillery outside its own territory. Or, at the moment artillery can go up mountains - tanks cannot, but they probably would have more chance of doing so than artillery. So maybe that is another way of dealing with the artillery imbalance - artillery should not be able to go up mountains, or if they did then their efficiency would drop to zero. This would affect Italy as the Alps really hem them in thereby making the game more balanced.

ii) Another issue that I would like to flag up is the Portuguese participation in WW1. I am not quite sure how many troops each infantry unit and garrison unit is meant to represent but I am wondering if the Portuguese are over-represented in Europe in the game. I am trusting Wikipedia here (not always a wise thing to do!) . . .

"August 7, 1916 The Portuguese Parliament accepted the participation of Portugal in the war, following the invitation of the British Government. The Portuguese war effort reached 55,000 infantry soldiers, plus 1,000 artillerymen, to be sent to France—4,000 soldiers per month—to man 12 km of battlefront. In fact, only the first two divisions reached France, as the shipping of American troops drastically reduced the Allies' transportation capacity.

At the same time, Portugal fielded forces in its African colonies, in Mozambique, to defend the colony from German colonial forces, and in the south of Angola, against native unrest instigated by the Germans.

Portugal had 8,145 dead, 13,751 wounded and 12,318 prisoners or missing." (at the end of the war, both in Europe and in Africa, I presume)

Just to develop my earlier points. Our game is upto turn 110 and the Central Powers are being blasted into oblivion now. The Austro-Hungarians must be on the verge of surrender but my opponent may not have time to capture Berlin as well. I found this about artillery bombardments yesterday . . .

"Preparatory bombardment was when at the beginning of a battle an artillery barrage would take place for hours and sometimes days. The aim of this was to wipe out soldiers in enemy front line trenches as well as destroy those trenches. This would then be followed by waves of infantry attacking these trenches in case there were any enemy soldiers left. Infantry soldiers would then occupy the enemy trench and in this way, gain more land.

However, this tactic was flawed as enemy soldiers, like German soldiers did in the Somme and at Passchendaele, could go in to bunkers or take cover for the duration of the artillery barrage and once this barrage stopped, they could prepare themselves for the suspected oncoming infantry waves so any hope of a surprise attack was lost and essentially all this preparatory bombardment was destroy the terrain both armies were fighting on. At Passchendaele, over 4 million shells were fired in the preparatory bombardment but caused very little casualties and only added the excessive muddy conditions.

Artillery barrages in short bursts were quite effective as enemy soldiers would be caught unprepared for these attacks and caused high casualty rates. Barrages in conjunction with other tactics such as the creeping barrage were also quite successful."

If the middle passage is correct then artillery in the game is way too powerful against well-entrenched troops by 1917/18 when it has been researched right to the end of the tech tree. Maybe there should be a maximum limit for the amount of losses a unit can take from bombardment each turn (say 5 strength points) - so that infantry would be needed to go in and clear the hex.

I have read some stuff now on WW1 and in our game the USA have not entered, yet Central Europe is being overrun by mainly Portuguese and Italian troops. I don't think this is very realistic, to be honest. I think Portugal has too many troops in the game and I think they are probably of a higher quality than they were in real life. Maybe they should all be efficiency 8. And the Italians find it too easy to get up and over the mountains - these terrain features need to be much tougher (prohibitive really) and artillery should not be able to cross over them.

I don't know if any of this is any use now for the next patch but I thought it might be helpful given that this is only the second game of mine that has gone so far (out of about 10 games in multi-player).

Nope. not as yet anyway. Perhaps they are very busy or someone is ill/on holiday? They have said that they are going to start building the official patch on Thursday and then they have to test it. Not sure how long all that would take - maybe a fortnight?

Up to turn 115 now - I am CP's. Austria-Hungary have lost Vienna and are on 11% NM. Budapest will fall in 2/3 turns so I guess A-H will surrender then on turn 117 or 118. This will probably mean that the game is drawn or the Entente will have a minor victory (I have knocked out Serbia, Russia and Romania - and Bulgaria and Turkey are still fighting alongside Germany) - but, in reality, the Entente is massacring my armies now and should really register an outright major victory. What I have done is to shut down all research labs and mass produce garrison units as "cannon fodder" - they are just advancing into the face of the enemy to slow him down. My losses are horrendous but it should stop him turning north to capture Berlin. None of this is particularly realistic though. Having a fixed ending date is badly distorting the latter stages of this game. This is something that should be looked at at some point - the war should go on until one side has to surrender or (if we have diplomacy rules soon) sues for peace.

My game has finished now after the full 118 turns. I played as the Central Powers and won a "marginal victory" despite the fact that the Entente was absolutely massacring my troops and had been doing so since the beginning of Spring 1918. Austria-Hungary had lost both Venice and Budapest and was down to 5% NM - Germany was at 42% NM, Turkey 69% and Bulgaria 91%. The Entente powers' morale was much higher around 75% or higher (Russia, Serbia and Romania had been knocked out earlier in the war).

Although it was an exciting game to play the last few months of the campaign were fairly ludicrous in historical terms. Upto the end of 1917 the Central Powers were holding their positions quite well on the Western front but that all started to change once the Entente powers had all researched artillery to the highest level. The Entente was then able to blast my troops out of their trenches even when entrenchment was at maximum level. Then, once my air forces and artillery had been substantially destroyed the Entente was able to advance at will. As the number of turns remaining gradually diminished I hit upon the idea of mass producing garrison units and putting them in the way of the enemy just to slow him down. It worked reasonably well and Vienna did not fall until around turn 112/113 - A-H morale fell to 12% and I expected them to surrender when Budapest also fell a few turns later. But they did not. I think they might have last until "turn 120" had the game been able to continue. Germany may have lasted another couple of months but the Central Powers were completely beaten by this stage. Yet the game says that I won a "marginal victory". Ridiculous really. If A-H had fallen, as it should have done when Vienna and Budapest were captured, then the Entente would have won (probably by more than "marginal" too, although I am not sure about that).

Some suggestions . . .

i) artillery is way too powerful against entrenchments - so increase the defence values of entrenchment levels 3 and 4 (especially level 4) ii) make mountain hexes much more difficult for infantry to cross and do not allow artillery units to enter mountain hexes at all (except by train) iii) abandon the fixed ending date for the game to allow a more natural ending to the campaign